So, for the 2nd post of 2013 and the first post for a good 3 ½ months, I’m going to talk about riding my bike.

But this isn’t going to be any old bike ride. Oh no. I’m thinking of riding a total of 26 miles. In one day.

Basically, there’s a canal that goes from Taunton to Bridgwater (yes, it’s spelt without the “e” in bridge) and it has a bike path next to it. It starts at Morrisons in Taunton and ends at Morrisons at Bridgwater. It’s 13 miles long. So, going there and back would be a total of 26 miles.

Click here to see a map of it on RunKeeper – there’s also a route for the return trip on the left.

On the topic of RunKeeper, that’s the app I’ll be using on my phone when I’m doing the route. It’ll be tracking where I am using the phone’s built in GPS/GLONASS system. It’ll be doing it live as well, so when I start the app on my phone it’ll post a link to Facebook and Twitter to a RunKeeper page that will show you, in almost real time (they’ll be a very small lag) where abouts I am on the route, as well as other information. I think. I’ve never looked at the page myself, I really should…

I’m not sure when I’m going to be doing this bike ride, so it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on here / Facebook / Twitter for an update of when I decide to actually do this thing. It’ll hopefully be in the next few weeks though.

I’ve finally got a proper website for the web hosting, and a name, a billing system, etc. It’s here: www.lloydhosting.co.uk.

I would put more but I’m editing this at half past 2 in the morning and I’m shattered. I’ll make a new post with other random ramblings later.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I played Portal 2 on my PC in the early hours of this morning.

It made me realise that it’s been far too long since I last played Portal 2 – or pretty much any game on my PC – for a while. I remember when I played Minecraft every day and you pretty much couldn’t get me off it.

However, the consoles have got me rather hooked – been playing Batman – Arkham City on the WiiU and F1 2011 on the Xbox 360 a fair bit recently.

Yesterday’s ClanBase Radio show went really well, had a pretty awesome show, and most seemed to enjoy it and the music. This pleases me greatly and hopefully next week’s show will be just as good – or maybe even better.

Currently installing a new (yes, again) billing system. This will take a day or two. Any problems, get in touch. The new system is awesome.

A lot has happened since my last post, which is why the subject of this post is so long. I’m going to try to say everything that’s happened since my last post, and usual for me, I may go into too much detail, so this post may be a bit long.

You have been warned. Also, new Theme! I like it a lot.

So, what do I start with? Oh, I know – alcohol. May as well get that out of the way first.

So, I was back in Taunton, it was New Year’s Even & I was alone, as Katie and her family were still in Ireland until the 3rd of January. I’d already planned to get drunk over the New Year, but I hadn’t realised I’d be alone. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I knew we had a bottle of vodka (in fact, we had two) so I grabbed them & the two 2 litre bottles of Coca-Cola I’d bought just for the occasion and got started.

The problem was I pretty must had an empty stomach so the alcohol affected me a bit quicker than I thought it would. Plus I was making the drinks a little stronger than I usually do. I ended up making a complete fool of myself live on ClanBase Radio (more ClanBase Radio later) and spent at least ½ of New Year’s Day recovering from a rather horrible hangover. Being drunk was fun. The hangover wasn’t.

Next is Spotify & Deadmau5.

I’d never used Spotify before. And I couldn’t remember, for the life of me, why I hadn’t. Then one day, while browsing about the internet, I saw a link about Nokia doing an awesome show in London using massive projectors and Deadmau5 was doing the music. The show was awesome, and so I decided to look into more of Deadmau5’s music. A Google search came up with Spotify, Completely forgetting why I’d refused to use it, I made an account and searched for Deadmau5. It found “Get Scraped”, so I downloaded it (to the client) and played the first song.

I spent the next 4 or so mins gobsmacked. What incredible music! Everyone knows I’ve always liked that kind of music – some of my favourite bands being The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Pendulum & Knife Party – so I was shocked and overjoyed to hear how incredible Deadmau5’s music is. There’s only 2 songs from that album I’m not that fond of – but it’s rare I’ll like every single song from an album. I’m weird like that.

Spotify nicely let you trial their paid versions for free for a month, so I activated the most expensive one (usually £9.99/month) and was overjoyed to find out that, with that subscription active, you can download music to the app for your phone (iPhone and Android). This meant that, for nothing (at that point), I could download the whole of the Get Scraped album onto my phone and listen to it whenever I liked, without abusing my mobile internet. Brilliant!

So, what’s next? Puppy? Why not.

So, Lilly. She’s doing okay. Still peeing and pooping pretty much where she likes. She was (thankfully) okay with the trip to and from Ireland, and a repeat of the sick 14 times from the Kennels to home didn’t happen. I believe she may have hurled once – but that’s much better than 14 times.

She sleeps in the funniest positions – I’m gonna have to get some pictures of her in these crazy positions and get them online, so people can see them and (hopefully) go “awwww” like we do.

She loves going on walks though. So much so she’s already learned what “walkies” means and will literally go insane until you’ve got her lead on her. She’s really well behaved when we’re walking her and not much scares her – apart from vehicles, she’s sometimes wary of those. But other dogs? Not afraid in the slightest. Other people? She legs it towards them, demanding attention. So much so that if she hears someone awww’ing her, she’s pulling as hard as she can towards them for attention. And as soon as they start giving her attention, she’s on her back so they’ll rub her tummy. Attention whore.

Laptop next. Only a short one. I think.

Got myself a “new” laptop. By new I mean used/2nd hand, of course.

It’s not the best thing in the world, but then for £50, what do you expect. It’s an Advent too, which makes it worse, but replacing the 533 RAM with 667 helped, as did replacing the 120GB HDD (that was dying) with a 250GB HDD that was in much better condition helped. It’s running Win7 64-bit and seems happy enough.

I got it so I can access the internet and so on while watching the TV, as the PC is in the other room. It’s so much easier to multi-task on a laptop than a phone. Plus it’s pretty quiet.

Internet Radio (Remember I said I’d talk about ClanBase Radio later?)

ClanBase Radio (CBR). Anyone at Wireplay will know that I used to DJ there, on their internet radio station Wireplay Radio (WPR). For a while, I ran the station. It was fun. However, due to many a reason, it was closed down, and I stopped DJ’ing for a while. Mainly as I didn’t know what other stations I could trust, and which ones would let me broadcast in my crazy, swear-word filled, shouty way.

Then, out of nowhere, Neur0 PM’d me on IRC and asked if I’d give ClanBase Radio a try. Neur0, for those who don’t know, used to broadcast on WPR. He was now staff at CBR. At first I was apprehensive, but I was invited to do a trial show, which lasts an hour. Well, the listeners loved me, and I’ve been a “regular” (I say that as I sometimes miss shows) ever since.

So, finally, web hosting. Some of you will know by now that I host websites, and for a while, I was only hosting a few. I now have 9 customers. The last 2 months have been really good for me and I only hope it gets better.

The Billing site is pretty much properly up and running, and services can be ordered from it. I’m still working on it though, adding entries to the Knowledge Base and adding more services and addons that people can order.

However, my newest thing is that I can sell Domains! Properly! This is pretty cool, as it will hopefully get more people to join up.

I’m also planning on upgrading the server – as I won’t be running the Minecraft server anymore, I can upgrade to my hosts’ newer and awesomely powerful servers, meaning I can host more sites and everything will run faster!

However, I’ll still be offering to host Minecraft servers for other people – if you’re interested, simply get in touch.

Random Last Bits

The WiiU is actually a pretty cool console, and Batman Arkham City is pretty rad. The updates to the game are pretty cool. The Gamepad gets some getting used to, however…

I have F1 2012 for Xbox 360 and I can’t wait to play it.

I got Tooned for Christmas, and it’s pretty funny. It’s a set of cartoons of McLaren F1 and it’s pretty funny. I also got Sherlock (the BBC version, both seasons) and I’m chomping at the bit to watch them too.

I’ve gotta ask, how many people are actually going to change from MSN/Windows Live to Skype? I have, but then I’m on Skype anyway, so the change wasn’t that hard. What about everyone else?

Well, that’s it from me, I’ve done 2 early morning shifts and I have another one today – except today is also a full day shift. I’m gonna be shattered when I get home.

I’m back in Leeds for Christmas with the family. In case you’re wondering, Lilly is in Ireland with Katie.

Although I nearly didn’t, the floods in the southwest nearly put an end to that and could have subjected me to a Christmas spent at home, alone. Luckily the trains were cancelled from Exeter onwards, so I was able to make the trip. Let’s just hope I can get back as well as I got here!

I travelled here on Sunday the 23rd and I’m due back on Thursday the 27th.

The coach trip was good, and bad. Good as it was a double decker, so had plug sockets. And free wifi. Awesome. Then it went bad, we got a new driver at Birmingham who turned off the plug sockets and decided to turn the upstairs air-con to 23°C… So when we got to Manchester, I moved downstairs & asked why the plug sockets were not working. I was told they’d been turned off and they were turned back on. On another good note, I got my fav seats, at the front of the coach. Win! I’m just hoping it’ll be another double decker with plug sockets on the way back. Hoping. We’ll see.

Christmas Day went pretty well, we spent most of it at my little sister’s house. She made the most amazing chicken. Gravy was a bit thick and spicy though.

Some pictures were taken, both on my S III and my digital camera, and will be uploaded soon. A link will go here when it’s done. And this time I won’t take ages to put the link here.

I’m thinking of pulling the Minecraft server I’m running. No one, including me, uses it (I’m too busy playing Command & Conquer, as well as other games) so what’s the point in using resources on it when I can simply put them to better use on making sure my server is nice and quick for my web hosting customers. If SlashLife reads this, he may not be happy. To be honest, the map’s a bit broken on it anyway.

Hopefully I’m gonna be getting a laptop tomorrow. Hopefully. If I do, I’ll post from it on here!

Samsung’s TouchWiz is much, much better than it used to be. And I actually like it.

For the poor bastards who have no idea what the actual fuck I’m on about, let’s backtrack a bit.

Most of you will know that for a fair while now I’ve been bragging about how awesome HTC are, that I loved the HTC phones I had (Desire HD and One S), that I had rooted them and put custom firmware on them, bla bla bla.

I won’t lie, I had done all of that, I had enjoyed having and using those phones and I loved HTC Sense.

What pissed me off, however, was the shitty build quality of the HTC One S series. I have had 3 different ones, all sent to me by O2 – and each one had a hardware problem. Now I’ve put that in bold to try to get through to the retards that may end up reading this that rooting a phone is a SOFTWARE thing – apart from bricking the phone outright (which is still a software issue) rooting a phone and loading custom firmware on to it can’t break the hardware.

The first one had Cell issues. By cell I mean it found it hard to get and then keep a connection to the O2’s Base Stations. It would drop calls, lose text messages, refuse to send text messages and sometimes send more than one.

The second one, as well as having Cell issues, had Wi-Fi issues. It found connecting to my Wireless-N router very difficult, and keeping the connection was even harder.

The last one’s vibrator motor gave up the ghost, not working for ages, then working 3-4 times after being left untouched for a long while (overnight or during a shift at work) then stopping again.

So, those lovely lovely people on the replace/repair department at O2, who must be bloody sick of me, very kindly allowed me to choose a different phone than get another One S.

Not only that … but they offered me the Samsung Galaxy S III.

I’ve never owned a Samsung phone. Ever. Not even an old “not-smart” phone. I’ve had Nokia, LG, HTC, Alcatel, Motorola, iPhones, O2 XDA, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Sony, NEC, Sharp & Siemens phones, but never a Samsung. (Fuck me, I’ve had a long of phones in my life. Maybe one day I should list them all.)

Until now.

I’d had a play about with a Samsung smartphone before though – a friend owned a Galaxy S II and let me have a 10-15 fuck about with it so I could compare Samsung’s TouchWiz to HTC’s Sense on my Desire HD.

I didn’t like it. It seemed clunky, slow, laggy & fairly unresponsive compared to the Desire HD. It didn’t have any decent Widgets, it didn’t look as cool and just kinda lacked … well … everything.

A lot of the reviews for the SGS II panned TouchWiz too, saying that although it was touch, it certainty wasn’t what you would call “wiz”.

It seems that, while Samsung had picked the right hardware for the SGS II, they had lacked a fair whack on the software, and in the world of the smartphone, any software that either comes with, or is integrated into the OS (like TouchWiz and Sense) has to be as good as, or better than, the phone itself.

Samsung clearly took this on board. Knowing the hardware side of the Galaxy line was performing pretty much spot on, they marched into the software side of it and, from the looks of it, pretty much wiped the slate clean and started again. I can only assume they either fired a fair few people, or stood there with a gun to their heads demanding that it be as shit hot as the hardware, or they’ll be 6ft under.

Well, whatever they did, it worked. It’s fast, fluid, looks gorgeous and the quick bars at the top of the notification bar are a massive timesaver. The Samsung is loads better than the One S AND the One X.

In other news, I am getting more and more customers onto my web hosting, ssmmdd Hosting. Need a website or Minecraft server hosting? Give me a shout.

So, I haven’t posted in a while. And there’s been a very good reason for this. For people who don’t like reading long posts, tough shit. It’s a long post or nothing. The reason I haven’t posted this until now is that we didn’t want Katie’s brothers to find out while they were on holiday, which would have ruined it for them a fair bit.

So, on with what happened:

Me and Katie decided that we wanted to get a dog, so Katie and her mum jumped onto Google and looked for a dog. A certain type of dog that we wanted. We wanted a Miniature Dachshund.

We found one that we quite liked, but unfortunately when we contacted the breeder, she’d already been sold. So it was back to Google and on Tuesday the 23rd of October they found a website called “Pets 4 Homes” with a listing for 2 male and 2 female miniature Dachshund in Swindon. We contacted the seller by phone asking if the puppies were still available, we were told they were.

The next day (Wednesday) Katie and one of her younger brothers went to Swindon to look at the puppies (unfortunately I was at work). Katie met the breeder (who isn’t English) at the door, who was holding a miniature Dachshund, who she said was the mother of the puppies. The breeder told Katie that someone had been that morning to pick up a puppy and once they had left the mother of the puppies had spent over 2 hours looking for the pup, then crying once she had finally realised it had gone. The breeder said she would put the mother into another room to try to stop it from happening. Katie asked the breeder about vaccinations and the breeder told Katie that the puppies had been vaccinated and microchipped by her father who was a vet and had done it cheaply for her. She also said the puppies had been wormed and so wouldn’t need doing for a month.

Katie handed over the requested £550 for the puppy that we had chosen and asked for a receipt so that we could prove that we had bought the dog and not just picked it up from the street. The breeder handed over a yellow coloured vaccination book that had a few foreign languages on it. As the vaccinations were done by her father, it was assumed that the book was okay. Katie and her brother then took our puppy (who we named Lilly) to our house.

All was fine for a week. Lilly was healthy, she was happily eating & drinking, she seemed to love anyone she met, she loved to chew her toys (and our fingers, chin, nose and ears) as well as the newspaper we put down and anything else made of paper. Christ she loves paper. Then she saw her reflection and hilariously barked at it and ran away from it, which had me in fits of giggles. She didn’t like being left on her own (she would quietly whimper), but that’s a trend of Dachshund dogs and it was only generally at night that we left her on her own.

So, just under a week later (Tuesday the 29th of October) we took her to a vets to get her checked over and to find out how to get her second vaccinations sorted, as well as the details linked to her microchip changed to our details & to get her signed up to a puppy club. However, this is when the problems started.

The vet examined Lilly and although he declared that she was in superb health, he noted that the vaccinations and microchip were from the Czech Republic. We explained what the breeder had told us regarding her dad doing the vaccinations and microchip and he mentioned that Lilly might have been illegally imported into the country, that due to this the laws regarding importation of animals and vaccinations (rabies being the big one) that he had a legal duty to inform trading standards so they could look into it. He said he would call us the next day.

The vet called the next day and said that Trading Standards would be in contact with us. Trading Standards called later on they were looking into it, but then called later saying they needed to speak to us. They came to our house and explained that Trading Standards in Swindon had visited the breeder and found that there was no paperwork for ANY of the puppies and that it looked like they had all been illegally imported into the country. They were investigating further and were going to being the breeder in for questioning. Weirdly, the dog that the breeder told Katie was the mother wasn’t there when Trading Standards turned up at her property, insisting that it was never there when Katie went to pick up Lilly as it had gone back to the Czech Republic!

Trading Standards, due to the possibility that Lilly had been illegally imported into the country and that there was a real risk of a rabies infection or outbreak, could only give us two options:

Have Lilly taken to a Government approved Kennel with Quarantine facilities or,

Have Lilly put down.

Now there was no was in hell we were gonna have her put down, we’d only had her a week but we’d quickly bonded with her, she’s well cute and lovely and funny and awesome, so we asked about the Kennels.

This was when they dropped the bombshell. They wouldn’t offer any financial help regarding the kennels, that we would have to foot the complete bill, that they would most likely require a substantial deposit and wouldn’t help with us trying to sue the breeder as it would be a civil case. After finding out the nearest (Government approved) kennels were in Bristol (43.5 miles away, over an hour’s drive) we then found out they would want a deposit of £350 and that the final total cost could be as much as £900! (I should explain that the ruling that animals, once sent to quarantine, have to be there for at least 6 months has been relaxed, and now the animal only has to stay in quarantine until it is deemed legal)

Trading Standards had to stay until the person from the kennels turned up to pick Lilly up, so there was an uncomfortable hour and a half of waiting for them to turn up while me and Katie sobbed and tried to ask them as many questions as we could before they arrived. Once they left, I cried and spent the rest of the night just feeling numb and empty.

A week later we went to visit Lilly at the Kennels and spent an hour with her, she’d already had her first vaccinations and her rabies shot, which was good news. We asked about the total cost and were told it would be sent in the post in the next few days. This is the breakdown of the cost of the kennels:

Accommodation 4 weeks (minimum charge): £450

Collection from our house: £100

Veterinary Quarantine Entry Check: £85

Issue of Pet Passport: £25

Rabies Vaccination: £35

Veterinary Fees – Full Booster Given: £50

Sub Total: £745

Deposit Paid: -£350

Amount left to pay: £395

We were also informed that she would be having her second Vaccination on the 26th of October and that, as long as we paid the remaining balance in full, we would be able to pick her up on that day and she would be fully legal with a passport enabling her to go anywhere in Europe with no problems. You have no idea how much I am looking forward to that day and being able to drive up to the kennels to bring her home.

Trading Standards have taken a statement from Katie regarding what happened and have taken copies of everything we had as they are trying to screw the breeder for illegally importing the puppies into the country and not following import and vaccination rules, so we are hoping we can piggy-back on to the back of it and try to sue the breeder for the kennel costs we have had to pay. Also apparently the police in the Czech Republic are chasing her, we’re assuming for the same thing! Any updates regarding that will be posted on here and most likely on Facebook and Twitter so keep an eye either on there or on here for any updates with Lilly.

Pictures of her will be posted to a public Facebook photo album on my account later and this post will be edited with a link to it some time on Wednesday.

Most recently, I slipped on a step in the house and ended up flat on my face on the tile floor, but my HTC One S was in my hand, also hitting the floor screen first. The Gorilla Glass didn’t have a scratch on it. The LCD display, however, was shattered so bad that the screen didn’t work at all, even though the phone did, as the capacitive buttons at the bottom flashed when I held the power button down.

However, thank God for O2 insurance. £25 excess and a day later, I was holding a (bloody cold) brand spanking new HTC One S. And even better was that the HBoot was 1.06 so I could flash whatever the hell I liked on it, without having to go through all the bloody hoops that the poor bastards on 1.13+ have to.

So yeah, it’s pretty much set up like the old, smashed, probably-recycled-by-now one was before I smashed it. Like a bloody idiot. >.< In fact, it’s set up better than the old one, as I actually properly read about the extra features in the Kernal and set up the governors and schedulers properly.

What else happened?

Well, let’s make a list:

I came back from Leeds safely. Which is pretty obvious, otherwise who the fuck typed this?!

I may have mentioned this before, but I’m now volunteering for the British Heart Foundation at a Furniture/Electrical store. It’s pretty awesome. They’ve got an Assistant Manager vacancy that I’m going for, so good luck for me.

I’ve finally realised fizzy drinks are bad for me, and must wean myself off them. This has a rather high chance of failure. Mainly ‘cos I fucking love Cherry Coke. The question is, is Ribena any better?

Me and Katie went to see Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds at the iTunes Festival in London. It was fucking awesome. I now love pretty much every song on their album.

I have found out that I am allergic to cheap Supermarket branded spray deodorants. How do I know this? I went to work having sprayed myself with one, and spent pretty much the whole day sneezing my nose off. It wasn’t pleasant. Not in the slightest. Then testing it by spraying a little by my nose wasn’t pleasant either. But at least it confirmed it. Strangely enough, Lynx doesn’t seem to affect me.

There’s probably others, but I forget.

I have a new billing software program for ssmmdd Hosting. (I’m still debating if I should keep that name, or change it to something else) Anyway, it’s almost complete, I just need to sort out some products and prices on it, and then it’ll be live. So keep an eye on this and as soon as it’s ready I’ll post a link here and obviously edit the Web Hosting page.

I think that’s about it. Well, that’s all I can remember, and it is 4AM. And I have work at 12PM. And then I’m volunteering pretty much all of Saturday. And I’m on ClanBase Radio both on FridayandSaturday.

I’ve been up in Leeds since Friday the 3rd of August. I’m up as it’s part of a birthday present, but also as my grampa has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, so I wanted to see him and my gran to make sure they are okay. I also hadn’t been up all year, so it was nice to see everyone.

Tonight is my last sleep in Leeds, tomorrow I’ll be going back on the (probably late) MegaBus Coach back to Taunton. I do and don’t want to go – I’ve really enjoyed being back in Leeds and seeing all my old friends, plus spending some lovely and quality time with my family. However, I still don’t like how huge and frankly noisy Leeds is, and that the buses are still poor & expensive. Also, I miss Katie.

I did a fair few cool things while I was in Leeds though. Got mum to finally leave Virgin Media and go with Sky, so she’s gone from paying £44 a month to £37.50 a month, for the same services (but Sky give you more channels for the money). Also, as I referred her a friend, we both get M&S Vouchers!

She’s also binned Vodafone, as they were supposed to have her on a 30 day contract, but they have screwed up & had her on a year contract, so I phoned them & gave them a load of grief (and as everyone knows, I really enjoy doing that) so they agreed to cancel the whole thing and handed over the PAK code. She’s now on O2, with the same phone (HTC One S) and Contract I’m on (£27/month, 300 any network mins, 500 O2 mins, unlimited texts, 500MB) plus insurance. I let her have a faff about with my phone & she seemed happy with it. She hated her old phone (a Samsung Galaxy Y) as it was very slow, the touch screen was unresponsive and most games were incompatible with it. Still, she got £30 for it from O2 Recycle. ^.^

I helped my gran to build a new massage chair and place it where she wanted it, which involved moving a massive settee and a number of small chairs. She was ecstatic with the end result, so I’m happy.

On a sad note, I found out a very close friend of mine has been screwed over by his now ex girlfriend. I’ve had some bad girlfriends in the past, but what happened with him was bloody awful. I’m not going to go into detail, so don’t ask.

I’m one step closer to hopefully signing up a large customer to my webhosting, so I’m really excited about it. ^.^

One thing I’d like to add is that Leeds City Council and whoever it is that handles if people are too sick to work or not in Leeds are fucking stupid retarded wankers. A (different) close friend of mine IS ill, she can barely stand, never mind walk and she hurts all over pretty much 24/7. That is not fit and well. She’s had no money – at all – for three weeks. Nothing. Nada. She’s expected to find a job. In her current state? She can barely make it to the jobcentre without being in tears due to the pain, never mind work. These people need help – not spending weeks stressing about if they can afford to eat or pay their bills. Stop pissing about trying to save money and HELP THESE PEOPLE IN NEED.

Right, with that rant over, and noting that it’s silly o’clock in the morning, I think I’m gonna retire to bed, due to the aforementioned a 6+ hour coach trip tomorrow. The late bed is so I’m up late, so I’ll not fall asleep on the coach. Because no. Wazing needs to be done, as long as the coach has plug sockets installed. I hope it does.